Terror Group Seen as Back Inside Iraq

The American-led administration in Iraq has received intelligence reports that hundreds of Islamic militants who fled Iraq during the war have returned and are planning to conduct major terrorist attacks.

L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator in Iraq, said in an interview on Friday night that fighters from Ansar al-Islam, a militant organization that the United States tried to destroy during the war, had escaped to Iran and then slipped back across the border into Iraq. He said hundreds of the militants were now in Iraq, where they were preparing to attack the occupation forces or administration. Advertisement

"The intelligence suggests that Ansar al-Islam is planning large-scale terrorist attacks here," Mr. Bremer said. "So as long as we have, as I think we do, substantial numbers of Ansar terrorists around here I think we have to be pretty alert to the fact that we may see more of this."

The Bush administration has asserted that Ansar has ties to Al Qaeda. Officials of the occupying authority, including Mr. Bremer, said it was possible that Al Qaeda was in Iraq, but they said there was no conclusive proof of that.

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Mr. Bremer spoke a day after a car bomb attack ripped through the Jordanian Embassy in central Baghdad, killing 17 people and wounding scores more. It was the deadliest attack against civilians since the American military took control of Baghdad, and it represented a new type of security problem for the American-led occupation. The perpetrators of the attack are still unknown and investigators from the F.B.I. have been sent to investigate the blast.

"We have seen here a new technique for Iraq that we have never seen before," Mr. Bremer said, referring to the car bomb used in the attack.

Mr. Bremer, who served as the chief counterterrorism official at the State Department during the Reagan administration, said his first thought was that the attack had been carried out by a foreign militant organization and not former members of Saddam Hussein's government. That initial assessment was based on the fact that car bombings were a standard technique of such organizations in the Middle East but have been virtually unknown in Iraq during the American-led occupation.

But Mr. Bremer said intelligence experts had since told him that some elements of Mr. Hussein's security apparatus were capable of making car bombs.

"My initial instinct was to believe that this had to be done from somebody from outside," he said. "But I have been told we captured and spoke to some ex-regime people and that there was part of the Mukhabarat that specialized in sophisticated bombing and it is possible that this kind of technique did exist."

The Mukhabarat was the Iraqi intelligence service.

Mr. Bremer said it was also possible that Ansar al-Islam or another militant organization had provided technical expertise on making car bombs to former Baathists who then carried out the attack.

He said the motivations of the attackers were unclear. The Jordanian Embassy, he said, might have been attacked because of Jordan's cooperation with the United States during and after the war to topple Mr. Hussein's government. He said it was unlikely that opponents of the government carried out the attack to punish Jordan for having granted asylum to Mr. Hussein's daughters.

The central question for the American-led administration here, however, is whether the car bombing is an isolated act or the beginning of a new series of bombings. Officials are worried that they may be facing a new wave of attacks by Ansar al-Islam even if the group had no role in the attack on the embassy.

The onset of major bombings of this type would present a new danger to American and allied forces, who so far have been attacked primarily by insurgents and foreign fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades, explosive devices and small arms.

The prospect of such attacks is a worry for another reason. The Bush administration has calculated that attacks by Baathist operatives will substantially decrease if Mr. Hussein is captured or killed and former officials of his government are deprived of a rallying cry. But there is no reason to think that attacks will necessarily cease because they seem to be motivated by a desire to lash out at the Americans over their support for Israel and their presence in the Middle East.

Ansar al-Islam had set up camp near the eastern Kurdish territory in northern Iraq, and the United States had mounted air attacks on the group during the war.

Kurdish forces who supported the American campaign to overthrow Mr. Hussein moved into the group's former stronghold, but many of the group's fighters fled to Iran and then infiltrated back into Iraq, according to American intelligence.

Mr. Bremer said the group had a history of carrying out major terrorist attacks, including car bombings. "The history is they do big stuff," he said. "They don't do chicken-feed-type stuff."

He said more precise information about the group and its makeup would probably not be available until American and allied troops captured or killed many of its members.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that some suspected members of the group have been captured and are being interrogated. But Mr. Bremer seemed to suggest that there was still considerable uncertainty about the identity and nationality of many of the group's operatives.

In addition to terrorist threats, Mr. Bremer has been concerned about the role of foreign fighters, who have been conducting ambushes and guerrilla attacks against American forces.

He said the new Governing Council in Iraq had asked the administration here to contact nations like Syria to find out how many of their citizens had come to Iraq to fight against the allies and the Council. But he said officials here had not obtained any precise information on such a count.

The Third Armored Cavalry Regiment recently apprehended about 40 suspected fighters near the Syrian border, officials said. They are being interrogated to determine how many are foreign fighters from nations like Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Mr. Bremer said the basic strategy to fend off terrorist attacks was to press for new intelligence and mount raids to pre-empt them. "In the broadest sense, of course, though it is hard on us here, I would rather be fighting them here than fighting them in New York," he said.

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